


The Furthest From Home We've Ever Been

by audreycritter



Series: Cor Et Cerebrum [37]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Humor, Prompt Fic, Some Swearing, Survival, american fairy mythology i entirely made up just now, amoral frogs, fae, kind of, nice birds, platonic cuddling for warmth, traveling through realities, trees that are hungry for human flesh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 05:31:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17176826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Tim and Dev have a long-running joke that Tim is King of the Fae.It's never been a problem until now.





	The Furthest From Home We've Ever Been

**Author's Note:**

> written as a prompt fill for cerusee's GoFundMe drive.

The air stilled and the forest quieted.

Shadows of high, pale clouds floated lazily across the distant ridges on the horizon. The Vernon State Park wildlife, already scarce, hushed as if waiting.

Tim looked up from the circle of browning grass. Ice water ran through his veins with a seeping freeze and he stared in horror at the ring of innocuous tan mushrooms.

His words, joking only a second before, rang in the air with a condemning weight.

_“Hey, Dev. Look. I’m the Fae King.”_

“Timothy,” Dev said, in the present, his grip visibly tightening on his backpack strap. “You alright, mate?”

Tim couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He tried to move and his arm felt like someone was turning him out from the inside, a thousand pinching insects gnawing him from beneath the skin. He wanted to say stop, to make Dev not move forward from the trodden hiking path into the ring.

He couldn’t.

Dev stepped over the threshold and the color drained from his face so fast Tim knew it was too late. There was a screeching of ravens, far off, and the sky filled with clouds. They flickered, black storms that seemed translucent when the lightning tore across the sky. There was a glimmer of bright, clear sun behind it, as if neither were fully there for real.

A wind swept across the mountain and the trees roared and cracked with the force of it, but not a single branch moved that Tim could see, though it pushed hard against the exposed skin of his neck and face.

The clouds dropped, pouring out a mist that seeped through the wilderness and cloaked everything until Tim’s world was howling wind, burning cold pain, and fog. He could barely see Dev only a few feet away.

Tim felt his feet firmly planted while he was jerked through space like a rag doll and when he landed, he fell to his knees in the same spot he’d been standing.

Dev was hunched beside him in the gray twilight, panting and swearing.

“What…” he gasped, “the bloody fuck…was that.”

The forest air was thick with the sound of creeping things. Tim had the oddest sensation that he could hear the worms and beetles scurrying and digging underfoot. The chittering of squirrels or birds was entirely absent, except for a lonely caw. The trees were bent and twisted, thick and old.

Once upon a time, Damian had genuinely hated Tim. It wasn’t the frequent irritation they fielded now, but actual murderous loathing, something he’d even tried to act on.

That was what Tim now sensed from the trees— a wild, creeping malevolence. Their rough bark and reaching limbs thrummed with it and caressed him with the promise of violence and acid bitterness. He had the distinct impression they were jealous of him and his freedom of movement.

“I think I might have hecked up,” Tim said quietly, stepping closer to Dev now that he could move again. “Like, super bad.”

“This is going to sound sodding mental but I don’t think the trees are fond of us.”

“No, I get it,” Tim said. He tensed all over. “We gotta get out of the woods.”

“Right then,” Dev said. “Which way, do you think?”

They spun slowly, in unison.

“I don’t know,” Tim said. “You’re tall. Can you see any clearings?”

“I’m tall, Timothy, not an elf. I’ve not spectacular eyesight.”

“Oh my god,” Tim breathed. “Alright. I’m going to stand on your shoulders because if I try to climb a tree it might eat me or something.”

It might have been his imagination that there was a greedy, hoarse _yes_ carried on the wind, but he didn’t think so. He tried not to think about that while he used Dev’s hand as a step to spring up onto the taller man’s shoulders. It took a second to find his balance, longer than usual.

“Dev. Stop moving.”

“I’m still as bloody stone, mate.” The reply was mildly irritated.

Tim glanced down. “You alright?”

“I’m sorry, Timothy, but what the sodding fuck kind of question is that, then. On most hikes, I don’t end up traveling back to Fae where the plants have it out for me.”

Tim had to shift suddenly to keep upright when Dev lifted one hiking boot and shook off some tiny, creeping vines trying to cover his shoes. There was a quietly hissed, “Sod off, you little green fucks.”

“It’s not like I wanted to— wait.” Tim stopped scanning the horizon for any sign of a break. “I’m…wait. Did you say _back_? _Back_ to Fae?”

“I may’ve been here once,” Dev said sullenly. “Before uni. I’d thought it a weird dream, alright?”

“Huh,” Tim said. “Remember anything useful?”

“Your da’s a sodding idiot,” Dev said.

“I meant about Fae.”

“Mate. Your tread’s digging into my shoulders which are not the muscled marvels your own are. I’m formally whinging.”

“Oh, sorry.” Tim focused on the woods around them and then announced, “South is our best bet. I think it’s south, anyway.” He hopped down.

Dev rolled his shoulders and shook more vines off his shoe. His face was twisted into an uncharacteristic dark scowl, and he glared balefully at the trees.

“I used to like you lot,” he said, accusingly.

“Anything useful?” Tim prompted. He set off in the direction he’d chosen, trying to skirt around the trees with lower branches. Dev followed, picking a way after him and muttering.

“I don’t know,” Dev said. “I was a sodding kid. There was a, a bloody party? I got lost in the crowd. Someone gave me a drink. I think I talked to someone important. It was a long time ago, and I’ve forgotten most of it, because I thought it was a bloody dream.”

“‘It was just Fae, Tim. I just got drunk at a Fae party, Tim.’” Tim mimicked with a grin. “I guess if it gets bad, we shouldn’t yell for Superman. He has a thing about magic.”

“Sod it all, I didn’t get _drunk_ , you wanker. It was one drink.”

“I cannot wait to tell Bruce you got drunk the first time you were in Fae,” Tim teased.

“Bloody fuck,” Dev complained.

 _Fuuuuuuuck_ , a few nearby trees echoed with a high wind that stirred their branches into ominous creaking.

“And that you taught the trees to swear,” Tim went on. He hurried his steps toward what was now definitely a clearing of some kind and Dev matched his pace. “That’s gotta be new for them, right?”

When they burst from the treeline into the broad, grassy field that led to a gentle slope and more expansive fields, they stopped to catch their breath and let the feeling of being pursued fade. Tim willed his thudding heart to calm.

“We’re going to get back home,” Tim said, to Dev.

“I bet you tell everyone that,” Dev retorted, but his scowl relaxed. He straightened, his shoulders thrown back, and took a deep breath. He looked down at Tim. “You alright, mate?”

Tim paused because he was used to being asked that by Dev, but not while in the field, and this was literally a field but not _the_ field, while very much feeling like it was. He missed his belt and cape. Thinking about missing them made him think about how little they actually had with them, and then that led to an undercurrent of panic that he had to clamp down in his stomach. He nodded.

“I will be. Let’s find…something. Someone. I guess I need to make some sort of formal apology for treasonous statements or something.”

The sky, outside of the canopy of trees, was no lighter. It was turning black with rapidly creeping night and a heavy, full moon glittered in the dark behind them.

Something that might have been a city flickered in the distance.

“That way,” Tim said. “Keep your eyes open.”

“Yeah, I’m just going to sodding kip on the spot,” Dev said. “That was my plan.”

“Shut up,” Tim said, trying to sound angry instead of amused. “We don’t sleep until we get home.”

“We’re not all metahumans, mate,” Dev said. There was a pause. “If I get quiet, I’m rehearsing surgeries in my mind.”

“You,” Tim said, readjusting how his backpack was settled on his shoulders, “are so weird.”

“Timothy Wayne, I’d think you meant that as a bloody insult, but I happen to know your da.”

“Are you going to make fun of me if I admit I wish he was here?” Tim asked. He looked each way before stepping down onto the packed dirt road that had come into view after they crested the last rolling hill.

“I’m offended, mate. You think I can’t protect you? I’ll have you know I could be a right proper ninja if I wanted.”

“Dev. I don’t think the Fae are going to attack us with brain trauma.”

“Don’t underestimate the Fae, Timothy Wayne.”

It sounded like a joke but it brought a chill wind and they both fell silent, any humor frozen in the air.

For a long time, they walked without speaking as night fell. They finished off the already dwindling water supply in their water bottles and then kept moving.

It wasn’t until Tim’s eyes were dragging closed of their own accord that he staggered and stopped.

“We can’t do this,” he said. “We have to sleep. I think we’ve been walking for days.”

“Water,” Dev ordered sleepily. “First. There’s a brook.”

They veered to the left and crouched down at the creek. Tim’s head felt thick and fuzzy, and distantly that seemed dangerous but he couldn’t summon the energy to care.

He twisted the cap off his water bottle with the filter inside and plunged in into the babbling brook, and a second later he screamed. He jerked his hands back, shaking them frantically.

“What?” Dev asked, grabbing Tim’s hands out of the air to study them. He sounded far more alert now than he had moments before.

“It was…it was cold and then it was hot,” Tim said, stammering. “It was boiling.”

“Timothy, mate, these are burns.” Dev shrugged his pack off and bent to rummage through it. He came back up with a tube of cream and rubbed it onto the reddening skin. “They don’t look bad but let’s not try that again.”

Tim flexed his fingers, the pain already fading to a dull background sting. It really wasn’t bad, just that it had startled him so much. He sighed.

“I guess that means we don’t have water.”

“We’re going to have to drink our own urine,” Dev said with solemn resignation. “I saw it on the telly and I always knew the day would come.”

The exhaustion was seeping into Tim again.

“I don’t think that’s our first plan of action. First, we sleep. Then we can debate drinking pee.”

Tim shrank to the ground a few feet from the brook and curled up with his backpack as a pillow. Dev wasn’t far behind.

The ground was pleasantly warm.

For a few seconds.

Then, the grass around him turned white with frost and the dirt beneath him hardened with a deep, old chill. The breeze shifted into a stiff, frigid wind. Tim shivered miserably and rolled over.

“Cuddle for warmth?” he asked.

Dev nodded and they both scooted toward each other, dragging backpacks with them. They curled up and Tim was nearly asleep when Dev complained, “How come I always have to be the big spoon.”

“Because you’re a freaking giant,” Tim said. “The entire three times we have to do this, I have taken advantage of that fact.”

Some part of him shouted that falling asleep was a bad idea, because even now he was cold through to his bones, but the thick fatigue won out and Tim drifted to sleep.

* * *

“Hey.”

A raspy voice cut through his fragmented dreams.

“Hey, wake up.”

Tim groaned and shoved weakly at Dev’s arm across his chest. Had Dev’s arm always been so heavy?

His fingers met feathers and a thing that crawled over his hand and back to the middle of his chest, right on his sternum. His eyes snapped open.

“Stop shoving at me, you idiot. The ground is freezing.”

There was a simply enormous raven sitting on him. It fluttered its massive wings and resettled on him, fixing him with a bright and beady eye.

“What,” Tim said.

“Oh, good,” the raven said. “You’re awake. It’s about time. We’re going to be late.”

“Late?” Tim echoed.

“For your trial,” the raven said impatiently. “Let’s go. It took me forever to find you. I didn’t think you’d made it this far.”

“Far?” Tim said, craning his neck. They were in the shadow of a huge, walled city. He blinked at it.

“Toadstools,” the raven said, like a curse. Tim blinked at it instead. “Toadstools,” it repeated impatiently. “You didn’t eat any, did you? You aren’t usually quite this stupid.”

“No,” Tim said, shaking his head. His throat hurt. “I didn’t eat anything. Is Dev…”

“Your bonecutter friend is fine,” the raven said, with a dismissive wave of his wing. “Wake him up, would you. We’re already running late. I don’t particularly care if Lylanthe is annoyed but we do need _some_ voices in our favor.”

“Could you, uh…” Tim looked pointedly at his own chest.

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” the raven said, flapping his wings and lifting up. “Hurry, would you, boyo?”

Tim rubbed sleep from his eyes and reached over to the shoulder still half-atop his own and shook it.

“Dev. Dev, you have to get up. This raven says we’re late for our trial.”

The city walls shimmered and the shadow seemed grayer in the wake of the glittering wave of light. Dev groaned and swatted at Tim’s arm and then, in a breath, he was awake and sitting up and looking around with tousled hair and alert eyes.

“What. A raven? A trial?”

“Hey,” the raven said. “We have to go.”

“Right, then,” Dev said, in a dazed voice, looking up at the raven. “Timothy, that’s a bird.” He craned his neck to see the walls behind them. “Timothy, mate. That’s a city.”

“Good job,” Tim said. “C’mon, you heard the raven. We’re apparently in a hurry.”

“The name’s Chris, by the way. So you don’t have to keep calling me ‘the raven’ like I’m the only one.”

Tim and Dev scrambled to their feet and resettled their packs on their backs. Tim shivered.

“Chris,” Dev said doubtfully.

“Well, it’s Chrysanthemum Iona of the Eastern Shore Clan if you want to be technical, but Chris is much easier, _Devabhaktuni_.” The raven sounded mildly peeved.

“Yeah, Dev,” Tim said, yawning. “Don’t piss off our only friend in Fae.”

“This way, freaks,” Chris said, pointing his wing. “I’m not your friend, by the way. Friendship implies something mutual. I’m more like a…benevolent benefactor.”

“We’ll take what we can get at this point,” Tim assured him. He jogged to keep up with Dev’s long strides and the raven’s loopy swirls through the air as he hurried them along.

They went through the gate through a silent city. Each block had towering stone buildings that were dim within, except for distant points of light high up and the sounds of wild music. The streets were deserted.

“Lively place you’ve got here,” Dev commented, when they crossed an empty intersection. Late fifties model Fords sat parked along the curb, all pristine with shiny hubcaps.

“They’ve not really bothered with the lower levels since the last coyote invasion,” Chris said. “Who could blame them? Nobody wants another war.”

He seemed disinclined to elaborate on this and ushered them to a building with a granite facade and ornate pillars. The shallow marble steps went up and up until Tim’s legs burned and then they were inside a dusty interior, a sage green rotunda overhead.

Vines crept up the walls and birds chirruped inside the broad space. Tim bit back a groan at the curved staircase but Chris settled on the floor with a final flap of his wings and hopped to a set of sliding doors. They opened on an elevator covered in rough bark, half the floor covered with a small pond.

“Top floor, Darby.”

“Uh-huh.” A frog the size of Tim’s fist jumped out of the decorative pond and slammed itself against one of the yellowed buttons. It splashed them when it landed in the water again, and resurfaced to stare with sleepy eyes. “Those are humans.”

“Yup,” Chris said.

“Assholes,” the frog said, vanishing under a small aquatic plant.

“Sorry,” Chris said to Tim and Dev with a shrug of a wing. “You know frogs.”

The doors slid back open to reveal a broad roof with dense, snaking vines all over the external dome of the rotunda. Several lithe bodies were lounging around a long rectangular pool full of vibrant teal water.

“You’re late,” a humanoid creature called from the steps that went into the rippling water.

“Oh, fuck off,” Chris answered. “You’re not even dressed.”

“I got bored waiting,” the creature replied, idly trailing a hand through the water. His attention drifted languidly to Tim. His thin white eyebrows raised. “This is him? For Yggdrasil’s sake, he’s a _child_ , Lys. You know there are exceptions.”

“He’s not a child, Lyl.” Another creature, identical to the first speaker from the tips of his pointed ears to the pale double-jointed knees, pushed off a pillar where he’d been leaning. His teeth, sharp and rounded fangs filling his whole mouth, glistened around a straw when he talked. He slurped a brown sludge from a tall glass.

“Lysander and Lylanthe,” Chris said, to Tim and Dev. “The current king’s northeastern consorts. Lys, Lyl, this is Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne of the Gotham Bats and Kiran Sidney Devabhaktuni of the…I’m sorry, Bonecutter, where are you from again?”

“London,” Dev said hoarsely. “England.”

“Oh, I _do_ recognize you,” another Fae said from the pool. An arc of water was spit into the air and fell across the surface. “I’ve told you about him, Lys. This is the one Morwyn got drunk at that party Arthur had.”

“I’ve never cared for any of Arthur’s parties and I’ve told you not to talk to me about them,” Lys snapped. He flung his drink at the ground and it shattered across the mossy tiles. The Fae in the pool sneered at him but shrank back.

“Oh, he’s in a bad mood,” Chris rasped, his beak tucked under his wing. “Well, then, say you’re sorry and let’s go.”

“That’s…it?” Tim said, staring around. “You said a trial. You said we were late for a _court date_.”

“Yes?” Chris said. “And?”

“Well, I…”

“It’s not a human court, you idiot. Lys, are you _sure_ it’s not a child.” Lylanthe stepped out of the pool and wrapped a thin linen towel around his waist.

“He’s of legal human age for the North American states.” Lysander kicked the broken glass out of the way, except for a larger piece he picked up, exhaled on, and then popped into his mouth. It crunched as he chewed. “It’s not like you to be fond of imbeciles, Chris.”

“He isn’t,” Chris said proudly. “He’s a bonebreaker and you should hear the way he makes men scream.”

Tim flinched at this without meaning to. It was one of his skills but not exactly the one he was most proud of, just that it was sometimes…necessary.

“Oh, nice,” Lylanthe said. “Go on! Show us. Break that one.”

Tim glanced sidelong at Dev, nervously, and then looked back at the waiting twins— he assumed that’s what they were— with rising anger.

“No,” he said, firmly. “No. I’m not going to break one of Dev’s bones just because you want a demonstration. And honestly I’m pissed because we’ve been freezing and starving and burnt and nearly eaten by trees because of a stupid joke I made. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was joking about something _real_ but I didn’t. I’ll apologize but I’m not going to hurt my friend for you and you’re going to send us home.”

“Pity,” Lysander said.

Tim could feel Dev tensing beside him. He balled his fists to fight if necessary.

“Apology accepted,” Lylanthe said. “Someone make a note of it in the records in case the king complains. Do we have any more of that oak wine?”

“That’s our cue,” Chris said. “Come on, Bonebreaker, Bonecutter. Home it is.”

He opened his beak and cawed so long and loud that Tim’s ears rang and his vision swam. When he blinked, he was standing on the porch of the Wayne lake house on the edge of Lake Vernon. Dev was beside him, looking a bit green.

“Bloody fuck,” he said.

“You’re always nice to the birds,” Chris said from the railing. He was much smaller here and his voice echoed as if he’d spoken from across the lake instead of right next to them. “That’s really why I like you.”

With a cluck, he flapped his wings and lifted off into the chilled air.

“Well,” Tim said, swallowing. “I guess I’m not the Fae King.”

“Fuck them,” Dev hissed. “I’m knackered. I want a cuppa. I didn’t even get to shout at any of them properly. You can be the Fae King here if I say so.”

“Remember what Bruce said about near-death experiences?” Tim asked, shrugging his backpack off. He slumped down onto the deck and ran a hand through his hair.

“He says a lot about near-death,” Dev said.

“Yeah, I think you’re adjusting,” Tim said. “Call Alfred. I need welcome back to the right reality soup.”

“Right,” Dev said. “Ringing him now. You alright, then? Honestly? You could have broken my arm if it would have gotten us out safely.”

“Never better,” Tim said, smiling crookedly. He dropped his voice. “I’m King of the Gotham Birds. And I’d break my own arm before yours, Dev. We’ll both be okay after soup. And after I tell Bruce you got drunk your first time in Fae.”

“And I’ll bloody tell him the royal house was miffed with you before we even got there,” Dev retorted. He shook the doorknob of the house. “You’ve got a key, mate?”

“Don’t need one,” Tim said, dusting his hands off. “Move over. I want a million blankets and a fire.”

Dev watched Tim pick the lock with slivers of metal from his pocket. “This is why we end up in Fae. Because you do things like this and it’s just sodding normal to you, you wanker.”

“Shut up,” Tim grumbled. “It’s my house. I mean, Bruce’s, but mine.”

“And this is what you do instead of keeping a key.”

“I got us back alive, didn’t I?” Tim said. He pushed the door open.

“By telling Fae consorts ‘fuck you and your little dog, too’ to their fang-filled faces.” Dev shuddered. “From now on, we stay outside of mushroom circles.”

“Deal,” Tim said, hauling his backpack inside and setting it against the wall. He hugged his arms around himself. “Video games while we wait for Alfred?”

“It’s how I stay sane,” Dev said, shaking damp out of his hair and flicking on the lights. “Let’s.”


End file.
